


the world has turned (and left me here)

by orphan_account



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, F/M, M/M, Multi, Richie Tozier Being an Asshole, Slow Burn, Teenage Losers Club (IT), Zombieland (2009) References, no stupid clown
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There were three weeks of debate and approximately 4 days of preparing to leave Derry for good, everyone in agreement with Richie’s oh so eloquent, “if I’m going to die, it’s not going to be in this shit hole of a town.”Or, in which, The Losers' Club go on a cross-country trip to outrun zombies, kick looters with shitty mullets' asses, and avoid stupid teenage emotions all before Eddie's 18th birthday.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> as mentioned in the tags, all of the loser's club is around 17 or 18 in this. some elements are taken from zombieland whoops.

“Ma! I’m home!”

Eddie called into the darkness, shutting the door behind him to watch the kitchen light flicker on and off and on and off again.

Two weeks ago, he remembered his mom calling from the landline about that same exact light, her nasally voice bitching at someone Eddie couldn’t place his finger on. And usually, this bitching was a telltale sign that someone was coming to fix it, either the landlord or the maintenance man or even an unfortunate neighbor. But, here it was, taunting him, telling him that that sinking feeling falling over his body was just a product of his paranoia again.

“MA!” he called again, fumbling through the house in search of the light switch he knew would work. He flicked it on, expecting to see an empty living room.

His mother had decided, in the recent weeks, that leaving bed was becoming hard for her. Her body was racked with chills, she told him one evening as he stood over her to essentially drip-feed her water, she was sure she had a fever. Eddie had never heard of someone being sick for this long, his mind immediately jumping to the worst possibilities -- _cancer, lupus, tuberculosis_ \-- but he shot those thoughts down immediately. This was probably another ploy to make him stay with her forever, just like it had been when he was 12 and he discovered that he was never really asthmatic and that he wasn’t allergic to grass or trees or dirt or cats. He decided, just as she did that she wasn’t going to get up, that he wasn’t going to believe her.

And now, staring at the rotting, gurgling corpse of his mother on his couch, Eddie decided that he _did _believe her.

For a few moments, there’s silence, his hand flying up to protect his mouth from whatever _gross, disgusting_ pathogens his mother -- no, this thing -- was emitting. And then, the thing lurches forward, using what’s left of it’s balance to get up, head hung low and body caving into itself.

“Fuck!” Eddie let out a blood-curdling scream, stumbling backwards into the TV and soon onto the ground. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The thing moved forward again, this time with fervor, like it was hungry. Before, when that was his mother, he used to begrudgingly accept her affection, holding onto the memories of when he didn’t know about her lies, when the only person who could protect him was his ma. Now, that thing was an enemy and Eddie had to be the one to save himself.

“God, this fucking sucks ! Why’d you have to do this TODAY, Ma!?” Pushing himself up from his compromised location on the ground, Eddie ran into the kitchen, rummaging around for a knife. He had never been allowed to cut his own food, even now with his 18th birthday slowly approaching. He didn’t know if he could do this.

The thing was looking for him, he could hear it let out a groan from the hallway, guttural and animal-like. Maybe, he could make it to the doorway. He could go outside, call for help, tell others about what was going on with his mom, get her to the hospital. The sinking feeling washed over him again, something deep inside him telling him that this wasn’t just his mom, and if it was, it would introduce a whole new set of problems to society.

Backed into the corner of the kitchen, Eddie fished in his pocket for his phone, the white light of the screen bringing him some hope. If the lights went out, worst case scenario, at least he had this. _37 messages from TLC._

“FUCK!”

The thing was on him, throwing it’s body from the small gap still left between them. It was heavy, knocking the wind from Eddie and the phone from his hand. It was pale, blood draining out of it’s body from the decaying flesh around it’s neck, wounds Eddie had noticed before from nights of holding her hand while she complained about her back pain, and something he wished he noticed sooner. And most of all, this thing smelled. The only time Eddie had ever smelled something this bad was when he was 12 and Richie fished out an old boot out of the mouth of the Barrens and proceeded to make everyone smell it as a part of “cowboy initiation.”

“Get the fuck off of me, PLEASE.” he pleaded, grip still tight on the knife in his left hand. All he had to do was move it up and into her -- no, it’s -- back, right in the middle of her stupid JUICY tracksuit. All he had to do was look at this_ stinking, drooling_ mess of a thing and realize this was not his mother, even if the last thing he ever remembered from her was the sound of her bitching on the phone or her horrible meatloaf and how he wished she was a better person. There was no running away from it now. He could do this. Right.

Eddie leaned himself further onto the counter, kicked the thing off with his _perfectly white, almost brand new_ sneakers, and did it. He did it until it lay limp on the floor, eyes pricking with tears that turn into full body-racking sobs. He sits down on the floor with her, crying for his ma until he realizes that if this is bigger than her, the lights and the water will be out soon.

Slowly, but surely, he crawls to his phone, hands shaking and covered in disgusting, fucking disgusting blood, and calls the only people he knows are bound to be alive.

“Hey, uh, Bill, are you with the others right now? Can you come get me too?”


	2. chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the losers stop in new hampshire

It had been two months. 

Two months since Eddie had come home from checking the mail and taking a walk around the neighborhood (finally alone) to find his mother, decaying on their couch. Two months since the gnashing teeth at his neck and the blood and oh god, the smell. Two months since sitting in the back of Richie’s shitty 1998 Montero, holding Beverly’s hand to the sound of “Highway to Hell”. Two months since it dawned on him how many people were missing from school just two days before The Incident, now probably dead, or even worse, one of those things. 

One month since they had taken up residence in the Tozier household, rummaging through the stockpile of food Richie’s mother had left before she went on her “business trip”. One month since that food began to run out and the electricity had shut itself off. One month since the slam of a body jolted the five of them awake, Bill having to kill the thing with a makeshift weapon -- a baseball bat with a few shoddily hammered nails in the forefront of it. One month since they decided they couldn’t live in this house anymore, not if they wanted to stay alive. 

There were three weeks of debate and approximately 4 days of preparing to leave Derry for good, everyone in agreement with Richie’s oh so eloquent, “if I’m going to die, it’s not going to be in this shit hole of a town.” They decided for Berkeley. Eddie rambling on about a cure found there that he had seen when the TV still worked, when the newscasters still frantically reported on the virus sweeping across the nation and devastating the population. It was a cross-country trip, sure, but was it not worth it for a cure? What if this bacteria was stagnant, waiting until the right moment to strike ? What if it was activated by something and they just hadn’t figured it out yet? What if -- 

The sound of the car door creaking open wakes him from his reverie. “Rise and shine, moon pies!” Eddie decidedly ignored the distinctly Richie yelling into his section of the car, body still aching from sleeping in the back of the Montero. They had placed the seats down to make room for all three of them, Eddie’s small frame usually curled into Bev’s slightly taller one. Stan slept squished next to them, pressed against the glass, and every once and awhile, Eddie noticed Stan shoot a longing look at Bill’s comfy passenger seat bed. “We’re in New Hampshire, I think.” 

“Glad we’re out of Portland.” Stan responded dryly. Portland had been an endeavor -- Richie plowing through herds of those things that had made their way onto the freeway, before realizing that standstill traffic wasn’t going to move if no one was there to drive the cars. So, they took to driving in grass, or gravel, or shady backroads that looked specifically designed to go nowhere. But, here they were in New Hampshire in one peice, and it had only taken a day and a half. Usually, this would have been a four hour drive, but again, Richie wasn’t very good at driving, or finding accessible roads. 

There’s a snort from Bill and Bev almost simultaneously. “S-So, where are we p-parked?” Bill asked, his old stutter making his way into his speech again. He had gotten rid of it around 15, but Eddie supposed the shock of a zombie apocalypse was enough to make anyone revert back to tripping over their words. 

“Some gas station. Looked pretty dead to me so I figured I could siphon some gas into ole’ Sonia here and get us back on the road.” Richie replied easily, trademark shit-eating grin painting his features. Eddie wished he didn’t still smile at the stupid “your mom” jokes after all these years, especially since his mom was dead and Richie had named the car after her a year ago to be an asshole. Eddie wished he didn’t smile at a lot of things Richie did, simply because it was Richie and he didn’t need even more of an ego boost. “Alright, hop out, boys, if something is in here I might need back-up from my dear Bevvie.” Eddie also wished that hadn’t stung a little. 

Eddie knew her and Richie weren’t really a thing. Bev never looked at Richie the way she looked at Bill -- longingly, like she wished for what they had when they were kids. Richie didn’t look at anyone like that. But, nevertheless, Richie was there and was something of a man now, chubby round features swapped with sharp angular ones and coke-bottle glasses switched out for circular ones that suited him better, perfect for sloppily making out and chain-smoking behind dumpsters with. And that fact was the thing that stung, and he could never put his finger exactly on why he even cared in the first place. 

Slowly, Eddie exited the car, rummaging through duffle bag of weapons haphazardly thrown on the floorboard of Richie’s car to find his machete. He had stolen (if stealing was even a thing anymore) it from the Derry General Store in the garden section, sprinting for cover as soon as he laid his hands on it. Derry itself was pretty free of the things -- walkers as the Losers had taken to calling them -- since it was a sundown town to begin with, and the only time Eddie really ever saw people pre-This™ was when the carnival rolled through town. Still, Eddie never wanted to take chances, and once they got out of Derry, shit hit the fan even harder than they thought. 

“Do you need someone to keep watch while you siphon, Rich?” Bev asked, grabbing Old Faithful, her dad’s shotgun, out of the bag. Something in the back of Eddie’s head told him that gunpowder and gasoline never mixed, and that he should be the one to stay with Richie. He shook that thought away. Just because Bev was a horny teenager like the rest of them did not mean she was stupid. If anything, Bev was the smartest out of all of them. 

“That’s what I thought we were doing. The three muskateers got it on lock, right?” Looking between Stan’s shaking hands over the taut part of his crossbow and Bill’s pursed lips, Eddie felt as if they definitely did not have it on lock. Nevertheless, Eddie nodded and moved towards the gas station. 

As soon as they made it to the automatic doors, Eddie was immediately hit with the smell again, the smell of rotting flesh that he had become unfortunately intimate with. The racks of the shop had looked eerily pristine, with the exception of the part of the store that contained all the essentials -- hand sanitizers, batteries, lighters, all missing with the exception of a few scattered around on the floor. Eddie let Stan lead, knuckles white around the handle of the machete. It looked pretty empty, no cashier to boredly greet them like Before and no zombies shambling towards them like Now. It wasn’t quiet though, the buzz of a freezer and the whir of a fan ringing in his ears, like both machines were malfunctioning and there was no one around to fix it. 

“Goddamn, I have to pee.” The buzzing and whirring were almost immediately replaced with the sound of Richie pushing his way through the three of them, making a bee-line to where most gas station restrooms were -- the back. 

Eddie stood in shocked silence for a moment before bursting out into laughter. If there was anything Richie Tozier was good at, it was making everything, no matter how life-threatening, a joke, even if unintentional. Still chuckling under his breath, Eddie waltzed to the cash registers, relishing for a moment in the fact that in just a few seconds, he was going to have hundreds of dollars in his hand. Did money even matter anymore though? Out of everything, why was he so concerned about cash? God, he was getting so tired of getting existential over every little thing in this post-apocalyptic world. 

“Guys! Little help here!” 

If there was another thing Richie Tozier was good at, it was also getting himself into the worst trouble imaginable. 

Eddie found him pressed against the wall of the hallway the bathrooms were located by a boy around the same age as them, taller and covered in the same grime. The boy was dressed in a grey hoodie and jeans, a scarf wrapped around his neck. His eyes were round and brown, eyebrows furrowed down at Richie. He looked like he would have been kind and caring any other moment, but he was scared, and everything Now was a life or death situation. “I’m not giving you my shit, dude.” the boy stated, still pulling Richie up by his stupid Christmas sweater. “Just get the fuck out of my spot and we’ll be fine.” 

“Hey,” Richie drawled, obviously scared but bullshitting nevertheless, “my guy, my dude, buddy ol’ pal, we,” he motioned to the three of them staring at the scene unfolding, “are not here to loot off of you. We just wanted some chips and some gas.” 

“Oh.” came softly from the boy, expression evening out. “Well. Um. Sorry. You scared me. It’s been so quiet out here, and the truck stop shower is a really good hiding place, believe it or not.” 

“Oh man, I know. You came out of fucking nowhere while my dick was out, like literally. You caught me with my pants down. You really shouldn’t do that to people.” 

“I’ll try.” The boy chuckled, deep brown eyes lighting up with his laughter. “I’m Mike.” 

“Richie. And that’s Stan and Bill and the little one with the machete is Eds.” 

“I’m not little, Richie. I’m 5 foot 7, that’s perfectly average.” Eddie couldn’t help but snap, eliciting a chuckle from Mike. It seemed strange for Mike to be laughing at their jokes after just threatening to beat the shit out of Richie, but Eddie guessed that’s how things were Now. Eddie quickly shot a glance at Stan and Bill, waiting for a reaction out of the both of them. Bill seemed suspicious, eyes now in slits staring at Mike. Stan seemed more in awe than anything, a faint blush painting his cheeks. Noted. 

“Well, Eddie, Stan, Bill and Richie, it’s been nice meeting you guys, but are you gonna leave?” Mike asked, one hand going up to his right eye to rub the sleep out of it “I was sleeping before someone came in.” 

“I mean, we probably should. Beverly is still out there, all alone and vulerable, our poor damsel in distress.” Richie chimed, words dripping with sarcasm. Bev could hold her own. She was more there for Richie’s protection than the other way around. 

“Wait.” Stan answered before Richie could slip out from underneath Mike’s grip, and it took Eddie a second to even realize that he was still being sort of held up by his sweater. “Do you want to come with us?” 

Eddie shot Stan a look that read ‘what the fuck are you doing?’. “Depends on where you’re going.” Mike answered, letting Richie go fully now. 

“We’re going all the way to California, but the next stop is hopefully New York.” 

Mike hummed for a second, before smiling. “New York sounds good.”


End file.
